I recently discovered a new social network/ online gallery for artists called Plovist, which is a place for painters, photographers, digital artists, and other 2-D media artists to post and share art. Before you think – ‘not another Pinterest clone!’, hear me out.

The Pinterest design is a proven model, and a few clones have already arisen particularly centered on the art world (Artstack, Pictify, etc.). I enjoy surfing these types of sites because they allow the viewing of many artworks at once. I can scan the images, and easily comment and like. If I want to view a larger picture, or to find out more about the artists and their other artworks, I simply can click on the image.

I have included a brief overview of Plovist and some of the features. Plovist is a new site and seems to be dedicated to growing and expanding, along with adding new features. So, hopefully we can look forward to many improvements and additional features in the coming months.

How to Join Plovist

Go to Plovist here. Click the Enter Site icon in the center. Signup by entering your name, email and a password. Agree to the TOS and click Join.

There are also options to signup using your Facebook or Twitter accounts. On the next page, login using the username and password you already created.

Edit Plovist Profile

Near your username at the top-right, click the down arrow. Hit the edit profile link.

A page appears to enter name, About (short bio), location, and website. Also upload a profile image at the bottom. This can be an image of one of your best artworks, or a picture of yourself.

Upload Art

Click the green Upload button at the top. Either enter a URL for the image or locate it on your computer. Fill in title, description, tags and a category. Hit Post when ready.

Explore Art

Now that you have once artwork uploaded, check out how it looks. In the Explore Art menu at the top, select your category for the artwork. On the next page, click Recent.

Your artwork should be close to the top.

This page uses the same format as Pinterest and ArtStack. Icons below each image represent number of views, likes and comments.

Click the big heart at the bottom right of an image to give a like.

Art Pages

Clicking on any artwork brings one to a special page for that picture. The full scale artwork is displayed at the left, with sections for critique and comments below it. Buttons for Facebook and Twitter appear at the top left, making images easily shared to these social networks.

Art Competition

Plovist’s current art competition is titled 'Most Loved Artworks Of The Month'. The winners of this contest are selected by a combination of criteria, including amount of activity on the artwork page (likes and shares), and the decision of a panel of judges. It seems that artworks don’t have to be entered for this competition. Simply post them to Plovist and share them as much as you can.

Selling Art at Plovist

The site says artists can sell art at Plovist, but I could not find much on this topic – only that the commission rate is 20% for any artwork sold. There is currently no place to enter prices, except maybe in the description of images. Clicking on the Buy button on any individual page only brings one to a contact form to email Plovist directly. The website is still very new, so I am sure they will have more on this in the future.

What do you think of Plovist? Do you see it as just another Piterest clone, or a great new site for artists with a lot of potential for sharing and selling art?

I really don't see plovist as a clone of pinterest, specially when it comes to the core purpose, what its serving for.This is an ideal, focused and concentrated platform for Painters/Photographers/Digital artists. It may be relatively new, but its going to provide lots of exposure and opportunity to all the artists to publicize their work across the globe and share/learn and monetize their artwork.Will wait for your valuable feedback on how to improve and add featureson the site to make it more and more art/artist friendly.thanks a lot.. :)

It is another new site. Loaded slowly for me. Would worry about the buying part, though expect the site will improve that over time. I noticed the same artworks repeated many times during viewing. What was that? Not overly impressed, though some simplicity and exposure is good. Interested in what others think of this site.

Looking forward to your suggestions, You can send it on the Feedback option that you see on the left side of the website or mail us directly at admin@plovist.com

Just to add to the features, there is also 'Tag based searching' where you can search artworks using tags (which the artist adds to his work while uploading) ,and see what other users have uploaded in the same category and

'Feed' where you get to view the activity of your 'Followed' Artists.

We will definitely be improving our website, adding many more features and all our efforts will be directed towards making it a great platform for artists and art lovers, but that will only be after we get feedbacks on our Beta product :)

Just a few thoughts... I realize artists need the exposure in many places, and I've checked out so many over the last ten years. I've been happy and burned. It becomes a full time job, and with few results much of the time. 20% commission, and you upload and market as well there, but here's the thing as with so many others. I went there, picked a photo, clicked and then right clicked. Tada! Saved on my desktop, then placed it in photoshop. it enlarged perfectly to 20in. x 30in. Last week I received an email inviting me to join Bazaart, I suppose they found me through Pinterest with my collage art. Bazaart seems to be a group who have created an iPad app bought through itunes to create collages from Pinterest pictures.- this means your art/photos/trademarks, etc. I viewed some of the work and thought immediately, as an artist- a collage artist- that this allowed people to steal art or trademarks from Pinterest, unbeknownst to the artist who created the board of their artwork whether it be pencil, paint, pastel, painting,photograph, etc. and not given any credit for their work, but using the true artist's work as a focal point in their app pieces. Now, not all, but I saw quite a few. I questioned back in an email to them that this is stealing and copyright infringement. As a collage artist, I use papers unreconizable- colors, textures, etc. But I'd never use a photograph or art from another without permission. That said, I'm wondering if artists shouldn't watermark all their work on Facebook, Pinterest and other places and always use low res. I realize many can photoshop it out, but it takes a while. While Plovist may, as many others, be a great way to get your art out there to the world, I think sometimes we must step back with all the technology and look a bit deeper into affordability, reviews, theft, etc. 20% commission I think sometimes getting into a real brick & mortar is the best bet and give them the commission for wall space and marketing and the business savey. They have the clientle who buy, so it's a win win in my humble opinion.

Having said that,i want you to know any photo that can be seen on internet can be downloaded. That is the nature of the Internet and then you can use image editing softwares to scale the image.Even if you disable right click etc still there are ways to steal images.

Putting things on internet comes at a cost and If you wont display your work at a Global level, world would never know that a great Artist existed.The reach of physical spaces is very limited and can never cater to a global audience.

So, Before uploading things on internet, you should know all this and In short, you shouldn't post any photos online that you can't afford to lose control over.